The action came nearly three weeks after hospital executives offered to return the hospital to the taxpayer-supported Palm Beach County Health Care District. But the district board refused the offer because of potential financial obligations.

"The problems just keep getting worse and worse," Cecil Bennett, the health district's chief executive officer, said after he received word of the virtual shutdown.

Bennett said hospital president Donald Anderson pledged to keep the emergency room open so Everglades Regional would not lose the license for its 63 beds. The hospital also plans to maintain its ambulance service, which serves the entire agricultural area of western Palm Beach County.

But the beds should be empty in a matter of days.

"Any current patients who cannot safely be discharged by noon tomorrow need to have transfer arrangements made," Anderson wrote on Thursday in a notification to doctors.

In addition to millions of dollars of debt, the hospital faces possible loss of Medicare certification because it has stopped admitting patients, an official with the U.S. Health Care Financing Administration said on Thursday.

"We certainly need to look at the possibility of ending their participation in the Medicare program," said Hugh Miller, a state program representative, from Atlanta.

"If the hospital is not admitting patients, but rather transferring them from the emergency room, that does not seem to meet Medicare requirements," Miller said. "We would consider it a cessation of services."

Everglades Regional is the largest employer in Pahokee, with some 300 workers. There was no word on Thursday about the employees' fate, but the mayor, John Norman, expressed grave concerns the day before.

"Closing the hospital not only would be devastating economically, but it will affect everything in the community," Norman said. "Pahokee will never be the same."

The board took no action after a two-hour discussion of alternatives with four of its attorneys.

The health district board chairman, Harold Ostrow of Delray Beach, reiterated that the district would take control of Everglades Regional if the hospital board would sign a transfer agreement accepting personal liability for any irregularities discovered after the transfer.

They have refused.

Everglades Regional board members blame the hospital's poor financial condition on the health district's decision two years ago to stop $2.5 million yearly subsidies as retaliation for a series of lawsuits the hospital board filed against the health district.

The hospital has refused to open its books to health district staff, but letters and lawsuits from creditors have revealed debt of some $3.5 million to bondholders and other lenders.

Moreover, the hospital owes $1.5 million in Medicaid overpayments it received from 1991-94, the state Agency for Health Care Administration said.

"There also could be significant debt to vendors we don't know about," the health district's Bennett said.

"Our board wants to protect taxpayers from these unknown obligations."